


I Said I Hate You (But I'd Never Change a Thing)

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: 80s Music, Enemies to Lovers, Humor, It was the summer of 2001..., M/M, Smut, Untold Levels of Teenage Sarcasm, Van Days, Wet Dream, canon compliant if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 20:00:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Patrick has no solid plans for the summer. Joe has a dream, a guitar and some asshole he picked up somewhere on the scene. That asshole has a van and a band name.Patrick has a feeling this is going to end badly.He's not entirely wrong.





	I Said I Hate You (But I'd Never Change a Thing)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flames_and_Jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flames_and_Jade/gifts).



> Happy birthday to one of the nicest people I've had the pleasure of meeting since coming back into bandom. Flames_and_Jade, is not only a super talented writer (although that goes without saying) she's lovely through and through and I hope today is awesome for her. 
> 
> She asked for snarky Patrick. I have tried my very best to deliver. 
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161115749@N03/43071766755/in/dateposted/)  
> 

“We’re like Romeo and Juliet!”

Patrick is no longer capable of rational thought. Patrick gave shit like that up – along with clean underwear – on roughly day six of this godforsaken tour. “Fuck _off_ , Pete.”

“No, because, like… hear me out.” Patrick does not need to hear Pete out. Everyone in a three state radius has heard Pete and his endless, ridiculous, _irritating_ supposition for the past four weeks. Patrick wants to wash himself off at the sink of the truck stop, change into a t-shirt that smells of three-day-old rather than ten-day-old sweat and then crawl back to the van and fucking _die_ over how much he misses the smell of fabric softener.

Patrick snaps, “No. Fuck off.”

Pete is undeterred, shouting – why is he _always_ shouting? – through the stall door like Patrick is hard of hearing rather than simply thin of patience. “Because I’m this totally cool Capulet dude just hanging out, you know? And then this geeky little Montagu comes along and –”

“You have the one minute, fifty-three seconds it takes me to change my shorts, put my pants back on and lace my shoes and then I’m flushing your head down the toilet,” Patrick informs him. “I am not attracted to you. I have never been attracted to you. I will never be attracted to you. You are the antithesis to my arousal, you are the iced water to my boner, you are everything I dislike about the Chicago music scene and if you don’t cease and desist I’m – I’m calling my fucking lawyer.”

There’s a brief silence from the other side of the stall door. Patrick basks in it, ears ringing with the constant onslaught of Pete’s unwavering, unending stream of verbalization.

It lasts for less than ten seconds. “You don’t _have_ a lawyer.”

“ _Leave me alone_!”

Miraculously, Pete does. Patrick is left in the solitary confinement of a Midwestern truck stop bathroom stall, nothing but cheeks blazed crimson with something that hovers somewhere between fury and embarrassment.

Seriously, fuck Pete Wentz.

~*~

Consider this.

Patrick has this friend. He’ll call him Joe, because that’s his name and frankly he sees no reason to protect his identity. Joe has this band, except he doesn’t, not really. Joe has this _guitar_ and this dream and this asshole he picked up someplace with a band disintegrating around him. Patrick has a drum kit and a summer with nothing more concrete filling it than masturbation and occasionally mowing lawns to raise enough money to fund his vinyl addiction.

Joe doesn’t know about the jerking off, could probably guess about the lawns, but he _does_ know about the drum kit. _Fate_ , Joe calls it, puppy dog eyes and ripped knees in his jeans, fluttering his eyelashes at Patrick across the hideous orange-swirled-brown shag pile of his mom’s basement. Patrick is mostly suspicious. But Patrick is also weak and a summer spent rolling from one Bumblefuck, Nowhere town to another is more appealing than jock rot and manual lawnmowers hauled down hot, suburban sidewalks.

“One problem, asshole,” Patrick grouses. “Monkeys will fly out of my butt before my mom agrees to this.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Joe insists in a way that makes Patrick think he should call a stop to this immediately. “Pete is _totally_ fluent in Anxious Mom.”

Patrick is cold in all of the places he’s not blazing with sudden, furious heat. “Pete? Like… Wentz, Pete?”

“Well,” says Joe, examining his fingernails, the wallpaper, the mystic depths of the holes in the particleboard of the ceiling. “If you _really_ want to make him sound like an eighteenth-century convict, I guess you _could_ call him that… He’ll probably prefer just Pete, though.”

“I’m not starting a band with _him_ ,” Patrick snaps; Pete is everything he’s not. Pete is handsome. Pete is cool. Pete plays bass like he’s hitting it with a hammer. Pete doesn’t make music so much as bludgeon it. To death.

The good news is, there’s _no way_ his mom is going to go along with this.

“That’s the _great_ thing,” Joe has Mr Rogers levels of misplaced cheerful enthusiasm, “he already _has_ a band! Well, he has a band _name_. Think of it like a brand. Like, when they changed the recipe for Coke, but kept the packaging.”

He can hear a lawn mower outside. Against any and all better judgement, he has a horrible feeling he’s going to go along with this. Irritably, he says, “New Coke sucks.”

Joe smiles, big and charming. “Dude, so will we!”

*

Meeting Pete goes as well as anyone (meaning any _Patrick_ ) might expect. Pete laughs, loud and ugly, at Patrick’s outfit. Patrick hates him on sight. Joe hangs somewhere between reining Pete in and pointing out that, like, it absolutely _is_ a shitty outfit. Joe is finely nuanced like that.

“Nice socks.” Pete doesn’t specifically _add_ the word ‘douchebag’, but it’s pretty strongly implicit in his tone (a tone that Patrick doesn’t care for _at all_ , if anyone’s asking). “Your mom pick them out for you?”

Of course his mom picked them out for him, who the hell else would buy his clothes? Patrick requires a cutting comeback. Something witty and pithy but instead, says this: “Nice _face_ , dickhead.”

Irritatingly, the insult falls flat because Pete _does_ , in fact, have a nice face. And nice arms. And nice tattoos. And a deliciously distracting pair of hip bones somewhere between the hem of a too-small Allister shirt and too-tight jeans. Patrick reminds himself, loudly, repeatedly and mostly internally, that he hates him.

“Can we play nice?” Joe asks plaintively. “Like, they _are_ shitty socks, I don’t think anyone’s gonna argue otherwise but, pointing it out? Out loud? Like, excuse _you_ , dude.”

They make an uneasy truce drawn up on terms of musical betterment. Pete plays just as badly as Patrick’s always known he does, making up for what he lacks in skill with misplaced enthusiasm and undeniable showmanship. Patrick’s relief that he’ll be behind the kit when kids start tossing bottles of piss from the crowd is heartfelt.

“You’re not bad,” Pete tells him after three songs and a drum solo. “I can work with what you’ve got.”

“ _You’re_ not good,” Patrick parries, tapping his sticks against his thighs to prevent him from tapping his fists against Pete’s jaw. “I can carry you, though.”

When they’re summoned to the table for cheesy noodle casserole, Patrick is almost relieved. ‘I made extra, of course your friends can stay’ is Standard Mom Code for ‘who the hell is this twenty-something in my basement and do I need to call Child Protective Services’. There is literally _no way_ that Pete can charm his way into the heart and mind of Patricia Stumph: Summer Fun Moderator, which means Patrick has a great reason _not_ to spend extended periods of time in Pete’s company.

It turns out, Patrick has _vastly_ underestimated Pete’s ability to lie out of his ass.

“... It’s _absolutely_ safe, Mrs Stumph.”

Somehow Pete has transformed into the poster child for Model American Citizenship, earnestness offsetting the rips in the thighs of his jeans that _should_ be exposing his underwear. The fact that they’re _not_ means _he isn’t wearing underwear_. Patrick is slightly lightheaded but willing to blame the cheese.

“I understand your concern and if this little cherub here was _my_ son, I’d no doubt be just as worried as you are. But I can assure you,” why does he sound like a local cable ad for political candidates? “as a responsible adult,” ha! “that your child will be in great hands. I’ll make sure he calls you every day, _twice_ ,” Patrick will do _no such fucking thing_ , “and I promise I’ll personally keep an eye on him at all times. No drugs, no alcohol, no girls, it’s mostly Christian rock groups on this tour,” there can be no way on earth that his mom is buying this, Patrick can hardly bring himself to raise his eyes from his plate, convinced his face is on the verge of bursting into flames from secondhand embarrassment, “it’s honestly very wholesome.”

Patrick is deeply relieved when Pete finally draws a breath to shovel in another mouthful of casserole. His mom sits, brows drawn and mouth slightly open, blinking slowly as she attempts to process that steaming pile of unmitigated horseshit this strange guy — _man_ — just dropped on her dining room table. The good news is that there’s no way Patrick is going to spend his summer crammed in a van planning new and interesting ways to murder Pete goddamn Wentz. This is because Patrick is going to be grounded for the rest of his formative years for bringing Pete into the house in the first place.

“Well,” begins his mom, pausing to take a sip of her water. “That was… quite something…”

Joe is beaming, grinning wide enough to show every tooth, nodding at Patrick in that conspiratorial way that suggests ‘I told you so’. Patrick wonders if Joe just observed the same conversation he did, or if he was suffering from auditory hallucinations or sudden onset astral projection to an alternate dimension in which that went well. Either way, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that this conversation is going in the direction Joe thinks it is.

Patrick has already arranged his face into his best disappointed-but-understanding expression; sorrowful but mature. The good news is that he won’t be spending four weeks of his summer crammed thigh-to-thigh in a sweaty van with Pete goddamn Wentz.

The bad news is this: Patrick’s mom totally goes along with it.

*

Patrick is concentrating very hard on the wallet of CDs he has balanced on his lap. He’s meticulous, re-organizing alphabetically, by genre, by fucking _color_. This, his Sisyphean task, has been ongoing for the past three and a half hours. The reason? That has been _precisely_ the length of time that Pete has been bouncing on the seat next to him making idiotic… _mouth sounds_.

It started with humming, low and offkey, along with whatever the hell he has blasting, tinny and irritating, through his headphones. It’s the kind of crackling background noise that torments Patrick, snatched moments of basslines he thinks he might recognize, shattered to pieces when Pete makes another unearthly squawk. Then it shifted to _ba-ba-ba_ noises, accompanied by out of time drumming on his knees with the heels of his hands.

Now — oh boy, _now_ — he’s just clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth like he’s popping gum bubbles without actually having any gum.

They’ve been on the road for less than half a day. Patrick has already lined up at least seventeen potential murder weapons, has scoped out a dozen different places he could hide the body from the safety of a bench seat that smells of sour milk and thinks he may be able to talk Joe into being his alibi.

“ _Paaatrick_ , you don’t have to put on the red light, those days are over, you don’t have to sell your body to the night,” Pete wails, lounging across Patrick’s lap like he belongs there, scattering CDs in a silvered waterfall across the van floor. Patrick promptly shoves him down to join them on the filthy carpet where he continues without missing a beat. “ _Paaatrick_ , you don’t have to wear that dress tonight, walk the streets for money, you don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right!”

Patrick, a furious man, bellows, “ _Come on_ , asshole!”

Pete, the worst kind of person, smiles back, parlous and troubling. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you doing something with those?”

So, here’s the thing. Patrick is playing at being an adult right now, stretching his wings, fitting into the skin of being the kind of cool, grown-up sort of guy that spends a month of his summer following ribbons of Midwestern highway as part of a sort-of rock band. This means, rationally, he should ignore Pete. _Maybe_ step on his neck quote-unquote “ _accidentally_ ”.

That’s what an adult would do.

But Patrick? He’s five-feet-four of solid, raging teenage fury. He’s a curious mish-mash of hormones and energy drinks that powers him like rocket fuel from the bench and onto Pete’s stupid, tattooed stomach. He lands swinging, catching Pete by the collar and throttling him lightly ( _What_? He only goes, like, a _little_ blue!) until Pete tosses a CD like a throwing star and Joe veers the van to the side of the road.

“That’s _it_!” Joe shouts, clearly done with this shit already. “You two, knock it off and break it up or I swear to _God_ , I will turn this van right around and go _straight back_ to Wilmette.”

“He started it,” Patrick mutters, a petulant five-year-old wearing the skin of a young adult.

Joe snaps a hand into the air. “And _I’m_ finishing it. Sit. An amp between you.”

They fall back into their seats, Pete blows him a kiss across upholstery that’s a testament to durability but absolutely _not_ cleanliness. “Love you.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick snarls, gathering his CDs back into his lap.

It’s going to be a _long_ month.

*

Patrick meets her in Missouri or Iowa. They’re barely a week in and already he’s lost track of states, he’s got no hope of figuring out towns. All he knows is that this one is small, the venue is drenched with sweat and teenage hormones and, distractingly, he’s just noticed Pete’s nipple piercing. He wonders, objectively of course, how that might — _theoretically_ — feel under a tongue. Not _his_ tongue, don’t be disgusting, but like… figuratively.

This is purely scientific theory, nothing more.

But listen, that’s not the point. The point _is_ that she’s standing in front of him even after she’s heard them play. This is significant because, despite Pete insisting that Nirvana never struggled with three members, he seems wholly unwilling to accept that they _are not_ Nirvana. They’re not even good enough to call themselves a bad Nirvana cover band. They’re awful but she’s pretty in a cute sort of way, too many freckles to really pull off the black box dye convincingly but with the kind of smile that more than makes up for it.

So, the beer she hands him is warm on his tongue and the brickwork is sharp against his shoulder as he leans against the wall all cool and casual and tries to remember how to frame thoughts into mouth-words. “Patrick. Me. Uh — I’m Patrick.”

“Hannah,” she says, blushing. Patrick’s blushing too, but while hers is this cute little flush of pink that crests her cheekbones, his is Ugly Blushing, the heat of it scorching like sunburn that tightens every visible inch of his skin from his wrists to his hairline. He swipes away sour, nervous sweat with his wristband and wonders what the hell he’s supposed to say next.

Honestly? He’s just looking for a make out session, tucked away in the shadows, sloppy tongue and a stranger’s spit glazing his lips. That’s what rock stars _do_ , right? The problem is, he’s not sure how to navigate from Point A to Point B. So, he shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs, smiling without showing his teeth. “So. Uh… Do you, like, come here often?”

Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.

She places her hand in the center of his chest, burning heat straight through sweat-stained cotton and into the rabbiting thrum of his racing heart. He blinks at her fingers, three times for good luck, then raises his eyes in time to see lips moving very determinedly into his personal space. Holy shit! He should do something with his hands! What, he isn’t entirely sure, but like, definitely _something_ , he should —

“Healthbar! There you are!” He’s in a headlock before he’s completely back in the room, Jack Skellington filling his vision and the urge to punch Pete square in the balls filling his chest. “We’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Patrick insists, undignified from where his mouth is pressed to Pete’s hipbone. He could bite him, _should_ bite him. “Let go of me and go — the fuck — _away_.”

It’s fine. He’s almost certain he can salvage this, if Pete just returns his motor control and that last lingering shred of his dignity.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you for some identification,” Pete has that earnest Mom Voice once again, Patrick twists, useless and feeble, before giving up and going limp. “How old do you think my friend here is?”

“Uh, I don’t know? Like, eighteen? Nineteen?” Oh, Patrick will take that. He’ll take that _all day long_. “Why?”

“Whoa, wow. Okay. Well,” Pete whips off the stupid, soft little beanie he’s wearing in ninety degree heat and squashes it onto Patrick’s head, still cradled in the fetid heat of his unwashed armpit. Patrick feels an intense and burning forest fire of hatred somewhere under his ribs. He’d bite Pete’s stomach but he’s not sure there’s enough meat on it to really give his teeth purchase. “I’m sorry to tell you that Patrick here is only _fifteen years old_.”

“Fuck _you_! I’m _seventeen_!” That’s precisely what a fifteen-year-old would say. Patrick knows without looking that she doesn’t believe him. Pete increases the pressure of his tanned forearm against the tender stretch of Patrick’s windpipe. “This is an offence! This is defamation of character! This is assault! I — I demand a fucking lawyer!”

Pete, a horrible person, continues like Patrick never said a word. “I know, right? Shocking. He looks older because of the sideburns but the kid’s just like, super-duper hairy. All over, if you get me,” Patrick doesn’t need to look to know that Pete’s gesturing to his ass, “Something else to think about. So, ma’am, unless you’re _also_ under the age of majority, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you move along and find some other dude’s face to suck. We’ll say nothing more about supplying alcohol to minors.”

By the time Pete lets him stand, she’s gone.  “Why — why the _fuck_ would you _do_ that?!” he demands, close to speechless.

“No girls, no beer,” Pete’s stupid, shiny grin matches his stupid, shiny nose ring. Patrick loathes both with the kind of fiery passion that makes his ribs feel too small for his lungs. Pete yanks down the peak of the beanie, blinding him with the smell of cheap hair dye and styling wax. Visions of first degree murder dance in his head. Prison orange is really going to clash with his skin tone. “I promised your mom, lunchbox.”

“I hate you,” Patrick informs him sourly. “Pure, burning, _real_ hatred.”

Pete, he smiles and says, “Oh, I know, Rickster, I know.” He honks Patrick on the nose and nearly loses a finger to the snap of Patrick’s incisors. “Say no to drugs.”

Patrick will smother him with his own sleeping bag, just see if he doesn’t.

*

“Okay, Pat-a-cake, you’re no longer our drummer.”

Pete delivers this particular bombshell over a nutritious breakfast of Red Vines, Nacho Cheese Doritos and Mountain Dew Code Red (covering the four major food groups; chewy, sugary, crunchy and caffeine). Patrick chokes on a mouthful of chips, spraying the half that doesn’t lodge itself in his windpipe down the front of Joe’s shirt.

“Dude!” says Joe, not unreasonably. “This was like, my third cleanest shirt!”

As if _that’s_ the salient point of this conversation.

Patrick chokes around streaming eyes. “I’m _what_? You — you can’t just kick me out! I have rights!”

Pete, bored, continues to pick peeling polish from his nails. “Forming member’s decision is final, check out the small print.”

“ _What_ small print?” Patrick narrows his eyes; whilst he might hate Pete’s guts, he likes the way the summer’s unfolding around them, he doesn’t want to call his mom from a payphone and beg for a ride back home to the three Ms: mowing, moping and masturbation.

Pete smirks, maddening eyes flecked hazel and gold and thick lips twisting soft at the corners. Patrick is absolutely, categorically _not_ thinking about kissing him. “There _is_ no fucking small print, dipshit, but this is _my_ band and we got a better drummer. You ever heard of Andy Hurley? He’s —”

“Fuck _you_ , asshole!” Patrick’s voice cracks like it’s still breaking, Pete’s smirk lifts a little higher, Patrick’s blood pressure follows it. This is how he’s going to die, cardiac arrest induced on the running board of Pete’s busted up van. “This is a fucking _bandocracy_ not a — a basstatorship! Joe and I get a vote and I vote fuck you and everything you stand for! Joe, _say_ something!”

“I mean… Hurley _is_ a better drummer…” Joe blows out his cheeks like they’re full of sickly-sweet marijuana smoke, his eyes wide and hands held out palms first. Joe knows _nothing_ of the unity of the Friends First Club or, apparently, basic human kindness. “But like, I — c’mon, Pete. That’s — it’s pretty shitty to just —”

“Oh, unwad your panties, ladies,” Pete rolls his eyes and steals the last Red Vine from the pack. The one Patrick was saving for just after practice. He can no longer think clearly enough to form coherent thoughts of Pete’s impending murder, he just knows that it will be slow, bloody and he’ll make sure he feels every second of it. “Twinkerbelle here is our new singer stroke rhythm guitarist. You’re still in.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that’s okay, but don’t call me a twink…” Patrick processes things in reverse, sweeping up the last three words before the sentence before has fully sunk in. It catches up like the crunch of a car sliding on black ice, the fender of rational thought slamming into the fleshiness of Patrick’s startling lack of auditory processing ability. “Wait… _What_?” He’s balls-dropping high again, puberty rearing its ugly head once again, Patrick isn’t fond of the gritty reboot. He clears his throat and forces his voice unnaturally low. “What. In the actual fuck. Are you talking about?”

“You’re. Still. In.”

“I. Heard. That.” Patrick can _taste_ his heartbeat, filming his tongue crimson as he blinks up at Pete from under the peak of the stupid beanie he hasn’t taken off. Not because it smells of Pete’s hair, you understand, just because it’s soft and does a great job of hiding his shitty haircut. “Who — who told you I play guitar? Who told you I _sing_? That’s like, classified information, I…”

Joe appears to be attempting to become one with the side of the van, sliding against the paneling like he can sink through it if he just tries hard enough. Pete flicks a finger at him in casual accusation. “Him.”

Patrick, hit by the dawning realization that his best friend is nothing more than a snake in the grass, shakes his head slowly. “You lousy, no good, _sneaky_ little —”

“He used unfair interrogation techniques,” Joe protests, sinking another inch closer to achieving oneness with the van door. “He got me drunk and said nice things about me! I was powerless to resist. Well, mostly powerless…”

“Can you write songs?” Pete asks, fingers steepled against the full flush of his pout, saving Joe from further opportunity to dig his own grave. Patrick’s pretty sure there’s an amendment that prevents interfering with the witness but saves that for later as he shakes his head vehemently. Pete turns back to Joe. “Damn, your hair’s looking _great_ with the roots coming back in, very Eminem, totally cool.”

“He writes!” Joe all but swoons. “Music _and_ lyrics, some of it’s not even half bad.”

“ _Joseph_!” Patrick gasps, betrayed; this is his own personal Ides of March. “Stop feeding him fucking intel!”

“And do _you_ know his songs?” asks Pete, as though Patrick is no longer present. Joe, that traitorous fuck, nods eagerly. “Great. Pick three, we’ll hammer them together with Hurley when he gets here.”

“Wait, no! _You_ don’t know my songs! And you’re honestly not very good, I...” Patrick objects to Pete’s back, vanishing in the direction of the truck stop bathroom, phone in his hands and a grin on his stupid fucking mouth. Patrick scowls at Joe. “Thanks a lot, asshole.”

“I’m sorry! I — he was — I tried —”

“Save it, _Brutus_ ,” Patrick snaps irritably. “You owe me a new pack of Red Vines.”

Patrick spends the day avoiding Pete for reasons that are numerous; general dislike, specific dislike, overwhelming dislike. _Similar_ , yes. But each distinct from the other. Late afternoon finds him hiding behind the stage, guitar strings biting into the pads of his fingertips as he hyperventilates himself into a lowkey panic attack over the thought of presenting three songs to Andrew fucking _Hurley_.

Joe is unhelpful. This is unsurprising but still irritating. Patrick may beat him to death with his own guitar, he hasn’t decided for sure. They’re arguing over the differences between Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and Honorable Mention when Pete appears, a guy in ripped jeans a straight edge shirt at his side.

“Losers, Hurley,” his introduction is charmingly offensive, “Hurley, losers.”

“Hi,” says Andy. Patrick makes a thin, strangled noise in the back of his throat. It’s neither cool, nor dignified. He may throw up, the jury’s still out.

“Mr Hurley, sir, it’s such an _honor_ to play with you,” Joe gushes, like Andy is Lars Ulrich and Tre Cool all rolled into one slightly scruffy, flip-flop-wearing package. “I’m Joseph, uh, _Joe_ and this is —”

“Ugh, Joe, a little self-respect, please,” Pete implores, shouldering his bass. “Okay, Patman, show us what you’ve got.”

“Uh…” Patrick holds out his guitar like a sacrificial offering. He’s half a second away from falling to his knees with Joe and declaring _we’re not worthy_. “So… It’s kind of shitty but…”

Andy grins and asks the way to the kit.

*

By some miracle, it goes well. Growing Up, Honorable Mention and Pretty in Punk mixed amongst Arma songs and covers of Green Day and Blink 182. It’s good enough that people ask for a demo. It’s good enough that people ask for their _name_.

“We should call ourselves Wentz, it worked for Bon Jovi,” moots Pete from the back of the van. Patrick throws his dirtiest boxers at his mouth. “Dude! Fucking ball sweat! Gross!”

“Fall Out Boy,” says Joe speculatively, his Simpsons fanzine illuminated by the thin, blue light of his cellphone screen.

Patrick chews it over, says it out loud a few times as he squints through the windshield; _car, car, tree, field, mile marker, car_. “Can we switch band names mid-tour?”

“Like anyone gives much of a shit,” Andy shrugs from behind the wheel and Patrick supposes he’s right; music is music and one shitty local band is much the same as another.

Pete grins, infectious. “It worked for The Beach Boys.”

Patrick hesitates. “Won’t Matt Groening sue the shit out of us?”

“What for? What do we have?” asks Pete, arm swept to encompass the contents of the van, the highway ahead of them, the Midwest and the world at large. Patrick gets the implication. It makes him smile. “You in, Sour Pat Kid?”

“Fuck it. I’m in.”

*

They form two camps in a van that tumbleweeds its way in lazy back-and-forths through the flat-gold cornfield wasteland of the Midwest. They drive in pairs, sleeping in shifts to the hum of the tires and the crackle of the radio or the stretched-thin warp of ageing cassette tapes. Andy treats them like a math problem, carefully calculating who is likely to cause the least emotional and physical trauma when left unsupervised in the front of the van.

Andy decides this: Patrick and Joe are not to be trusted. Too easily distracted, too inclined towards middle-of-the-night, volume-driven debates about radio station choices that, in Andy’s expert opinion, are likely to lead to freeway wrecks and grieving parents. Patrick and Andy is not a possibility because that leaves Pete and Joe, and Andy has worked out, quickly, that Joe will do _literally_ anything Pete tells him to. This means, says Andy, that neither Patrick nor Andy would be safe to lose consciousness around them for fear of the consequences etched in the shape of Sharpie-inked penises on sleeping foreheads.

This leaves Joe and Andy as driving buddies. Sensible Andy and obedient Joe, the stalwart warriors of the I-90.

By some cruel twist of fate, this also leaves Patrick and _Pete_.

“No way,” says Patrick, when the point is first mooted, a shiny new dent in the fender of the van inflicted as a result of Patrick letting go of the steering wheel entirely to flip Joe the bird with both hands during a particularly heated discussion. “As if _I’m_ responsible for random fucking fence posts and no fucking fence. That thing came out of nowhere!”

“It came out of the _ground_ ,” Andy points out, exasperated. “Where it’s been sitting for the past who the hell knows how long. If you’d been paying attention to the _road_ —”

“Nope, not doing it,” Patrick crosses his arms and stares defiantly into the middle distance.

Andy sighs, a tension headache sigh, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, this way I keep an eye on Joe and the two of _you_ ,” he gestures between Patrick and Pete as though he can’t quite figure out who is the worst between them — a conundrum Patrick finds entirely unfair, “will irritate one another awake. It makes sense.”

“Like hell it does.”

“Aww what’s the matter, Stumpy?” Pete pouts attractively, applying eyeliner in the side mirror. He blows himself a kiss in the glass that Patrick _knows_ a trail of broken hearts and hymens across the Midwest would be only too happy to reciprocate. “Don’t you want to ride up front with daddy?”

“Gross,” says Patrick with the kind of maturity it deserves. “Do I have a choice?”

“You don’t,” confirms Andy. “At all.”              

“Come on, little guy,” Pete is already in the driver’s seat and patting the passenger seat encouragingly. “If you’re a _really good boy_ , I might even get you a Lunchable.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

It’s really the only answer Patrick has.

*

Look, it’s not that Patrick’s like, _fussy_ when it comes to the ins and outs (and back and forths) of self-gratification. Find a quiet space, think sexy thoughts, rubpulltug until orgasm is achieved. He’s a seventeen-year-old guy, he’s pretty much an expert and regards it as his part-time occupation.

If jerking off is a profession then Patrick is a virtuoso, able to fill his time quite happily with the pleasant tingling throb of his cock in his hand as he stares at the ceiling of his bedroom and imagines, imagines, _imagines_. It’s not that he has some kind of _problem_ , no. It’s the usual indicators of a typical teenage sex drive, that’s all. The _problem_ is finding somewhere to scratch the itch in a van crammed with sweaty dudes who smell of abandoned gym kit in a summer day locker ninety-nine percent of the time.

He’s tried, God knows he’s _tried_ , in truck stops and those rare, blissful moments when Pete sleeps and Joe and Andy seem far away in the alternate universe of the front seat. Times when it’s just Patrick and the magnificent magnitude of his erection, fist tucked down the front of his jeans as he works himself over quietly. Then Pete will fart, or Joe will sneeze and suddenly Patrick is nursing the shrinking softness of an almost-semi in the darkness, wondering if this qualifies him for a place on the sex offenders register.

It’s been three weeks. Patrick would be researching if it’s actually possible to die of blue balls if he had access to a reliable internet connection. Then he’d use that reliable internet connection to masturbate over low-quality, grainy blowjob videos.

But right now, he’s close, watching the flutter-flash of passing headlights and listening to the hum of the tires beneath him. He’s stroking slow and smooth, biting tiny groans into the stuffing of his sleeping bag as the thick, hot hardness of his cock slides under the spit-slippery slick of his palm. He can feel it building, that wonderful pressure knotting low in his belly as his toes curl uselessly against the floor and his back arches into the greedy grasp of his right hand.

He’s thinking about nothing in particular, the usual run of faceless porn that makes up his spank bank; mouths, hands, holes working tight and warm over the throb of his cock. He bites his lip, twists a little further into the wrap of his palm around his prick and thinks yes, fuck yes, just a few more strokes and…

Without warning, it’s not faceless anymore. Patrick’s fantasies are tangible, something real and breathing fire through his bloodstream. Patrick is thinking of amber eyes and smirking lips, the heat of whispered breath prickling the coarse hair that dusts his thighs. Pete. Pete’s mouth biting kisses to the delicate pink pebbles of Patrick’s nipples, Pete’s tongue sliding wetwarmsoft across the red-gold fuzz of his stomach, picking up the coarse trail that leads to the straining throb of his cock curving heavy and lust-gorged.

Would Pete say anything before he sucks him down? Would he tease him, biting kisses to his thighs until Patrick begs like Pete is granting benediction in the form of a hot, wet mouth over his blood-dark prick? Would he lick, slow and smooth, from the tingling tightness of Patrick’s balls up and over the salt-sharp skin of his shaft, close his lips all showy and thick around the tip and then —

A warm arm slides over his waist, a body kicking off more heat than any human being should pushing flush to the ramrod straight stretch of Patrick’s panicked spine. Patrick spasms, gasps, goes momentarily blind with terror as he stills, caught in the headlights of his own hubris. He freezes, blood crashing against his inner ears as he woozes, dizzy on the sudden frantic redirection of panicked blood cells from his dick to his brain. Pins and needles fizz his fingers and toes as he stays perfectly still.

Pete mumbles something soft and sleepy into the back of Patrick’s neck, hung halfway between dreams and reality, thankfully unaware of the hand still stuffed down the front of Patrick’s jeans. Does he know? Will he pick up Patrick’s thoughts by osmosis, transferred on the guilt-sweat prickled skin of Patrick’s lower back, slicked tight to the bare, inked stretch of his stomach revealed by rucked up shirts and kicked down sleeping bags?

It is imperatively important that Patrick knows — _conclusively_ — if it’s possible for the exact content of one’s inadvertent sexual fantasies that drift in — _completely uninvited_ , might he add — at the crucial point before orgasm to be transferred by skin-to-skin contact. This is important because, if it _is_ possible, then Patrick has no choice but to open the back door of the van, hurl himself onto the asphalt and under the wheels of the nearest semi-truck.

His cock is soft against his fingers now, nestled into the damp copper curls like it’s shrinking from his hand. He withdraws his fingers slowly, every misfiring neutron trained on the way Pete breathes behind him, tucks them under his cheek and pretends he can’t smell the familiar tang of spit and precome on his skin. Pete huffs in his sleep, his breath stirring electric shocks along Patrick’ spine.

Pete’s socked feet tuck to the back of Patrick’s calves. Patrick thinks about demanding a piss break and using it to call his mom, like the adult he’s not, and demanding she collect him immediately. Because it’s not easy when Pete’s like this, when he’s breathing sour breath in snuffling snores against Patrick’s throat. When he’s rubbing absent, sleepy patterns on the downy hair around Patrick’s bellybutton. When he’s absently grinding the sleepy warmth of a nocturnal semi into the crack of Patrick’s ass. When he’s not being the living, breathing embodiment of the word _obnoxious_.

When he’s like this he’s something more than tolerable. When he’s like _this_ he’s the kind of prospect Patrick hasn’t let himself consider for the past three weeks. Patrick has a horrifying, awful, gut-churning thought kicking bass lines against the back of his skull.

Patrick thinks he might have developed a crush on Pete _fucking_ Wentz.

*

The problem with being a front man, Patrick is discovering, is that there isn’t really any feasible place to hide when it all goes to hell. The position of drummer is unique in that it comes complete with its own armor in the form of snares and kick drums. Up front on six-inch risers, the only thing he has to his name is a mic stand and if he’s being entirely honest, the drink that just hit him square in the chest, fountaining up and into his face, was entirely deserved.

It turns out this isn’t the kind of venue where they can get away with amateurish bullshit. Strictly over 21s, two intersecting black lines carved to the back of Patrick’s and Joe’s hands like accusations, marking them out as the only children in a roomful of apathetic young adults who didn’t come out to see second rate pop punk. Or ‘ _Chicago softcore_ ’ or whatever label Pete is slapping on them today. This is the kind of crowd they’ll be lucky to make it out of without a couple of black eyes and a busted lip divided up amongst them.

They’re two verses into Honorable Mention and he’s not sure he’s hit a correct chord yet. This is disconcerting as there’s only, like, _six_ of them in the whole song and the laws of averages dictate that he should have managed it at least once or twice by now.

The problem is Pete.

Pete, distractingly wet with sweat beading in his hair. Pete with that nipple ring on display like he wants Patrick to touch it. Pete with teeth that catch the light in the corners of his smile, the chipped black polish on his raised middle fingers drawing the eye ( _Patrick’s_ eye) to the tanned length of them as he catcalls encouragement to the next motherfucker that wants to throw something.

Patrick is becoming a victim of his own self-indulgence. Confidence is key so he slams his hand to the frets with authority, ignores the warm beer dripping from his left sideburn and hurls himself into the chorus.

This is, of course, the moment Pete decides to do something completely unprecedented, unrehearsed and, as far as Patrick’s sense of not wanting a boner on stage is concerned, entirely un-fucking-welcome. He slides in close, bass slung up his back, and presses the wet heat of his chest against the curve of Patrick’s spine, his breath sticky-warm against the back of Patrick’s neck. It’s too much, too similar, the response of Patrick’s cock jumping stiff in his jeans behind the merciful camouflage of a battered Les Paul entirely Pavlovian.

Patrick has no idea if his eyes are closed or if he’s gone blind from the sudden lack of blood flow to his brain, if that’s a blush or touch-paper-gasoline-fire chasing shadows across his skin as Pete leans even closer and, with a throaty, sexy sort of groan, licks away the beer dripping rivers along the salt-wet stretch of Patrick’s throat.

What Patrick does know for sure is that his voice cracks entirely, sliding up into a breathy squeak as he stumbles half a step and headbutts the microphone, dragged back from plunging into the fray of pulsing kids by the warmth of a fist in the back of his belt. Patrick will punch Pete in the face and throw himself from the Sears Tower before he admits that he’s sporting a hard on induced by the run of Pete’s tongue against his skin.

Patrick is saved from that particular judgement call by the same motherfucker Pete taunted earlier. He throws something. Something suspiciously like a glass bottle that shatters against the drum kit and then, like a fun game of Red Rover, more come sailing over. They flee the stage like thieves, a tangle of arms, legs and badly linked cables tripping for the safety of the room behind the bar.

“Told you we’d suck,” Joe declares proudly. If he had to be right about something, it would be this.

“New New Coke,” giggles Patrick, random erection back under control but skin tingling sore from the slick of Pete’s lips. “Oh God, are we about to get run out of town? This seems like the kind of place that might still stone us to death...”

“On the horse we rode in on,” Andy confirms, peering nervously back into the melee of the club. “Holy shit dude, who knew it was possible to suck that badly?”

Patrick thinks about apologizing then thinks better of it, swinging his heels through the air as he perches on the edge of a desk in the corner and waits for the manager to give them the all clear to retrieve their shit. There’s no way they’re getting paid for this which means another night sleeping in the van. By extension, this means another night curled close to Pete between amps and stung with sexual tension only Patrick seems to feel. He tries not to think about the way the hair on his arms prickles stiff when Pete smiles at him. It’s just a stupid crush, he gets them a lot, it’ll pass.

They’re out by the van when it happens, summer air scented sticky with hot sidewalk and drifting gasoline fumes from the busted cap on the gas tank. Joe and Andy have gone in search of a missing pedal, Pete and Patrick left lounging against the sun-warmed paneling, the heat of the day clinging to the faded paintwork.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Pete starts uncertainly. Pete is never uncertain. “But it’s kind of personal…”

Patrick’s heart is made of sloppy electric shocks, tingles fuzzing like shaken soda cans down into the tips of his fingers as he licks his dry lips and blinks at Pete. “I, uh — yeah, sure. Go ahead?”

Pete shifts and sighs, stares up at the sky and then back at Patrick, amber eyes endless. “I mean, I totally get it if you don’t want to talk about it, but… Oh, it’s dumb, forget I —”

“No.” There’s a strangled raven where Patrick’s vocal cords once resided. “This is… uh — I mean, we can talk about it. Now.”

“You’re sure?” Pete’s voice is silk where Patrick’s is concrete, his tongue flickering pink over the flush of his lips as he leans in and whispers into the crackle of static between them, “Is your voice still breaking? Because back there on the stage? That’s like, the second time that’s happened in the past couple days...”

Patrick blinks. If, hypothetically, there was a truck passing right now, Patrick has no idea which of them he’d toss beneath it.

“Dude.” Patrick hates him. He hates him _so much_. “Fuck you.”

“I know puberty can be a confusing time, there’s lots of strange things happening,” Pete continues, like a man that doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. “Hair where there wasn’t hair before, maybe you’re starting to notice girls a little more. Not to mention the embarrassing penis stuff. Man, that little guy just has a mind of his own right now, am I right?”

Patrick takes two steps towards him, alarmingly unsure of what he’s going to do when he gets there but thinking it may involve wrapping his hands around Pete’s throat until he stops making noises. Pete is quicker, always quicker, _his_ agenda established as he knocks into Patrick and sets him off balance, spinning him in a waltz that ends with the winded thump of his back to the van as Pete presses into him. He smells of Big Red and dangerous smiles, of sexual innuendo and desperate, throbbing need as he leans in close. As close as he was on the stage, as close as he was tangled in sleeping bags.

Patrick thinks Pete might be about to kiss him and — disconcertingly — Patrick has no intention of stopping him, his common sense entirely MIA.

Pete brings his mouth very near to Patrick’s, near enough that Patrick can see the way the skin flakes from chapped lips, that Pete’s breath beads like sweat against Patrick’s skin. He swallows heavily. Patrick’s lips are parted, damp with spit, mouth tilted up in anticipation as Pete leans down and murmurs like a porn star, “Were you thinking about me when you were jerking off last night?”

Pete’s still laughing around the smear of a bloodied lower lip a half hour later. Patrick flexes his bruised knuckles against the worn, warm vinyl of the steering wheel and wonders if they’re likely to try him as an adult for the inevitable impending charge of first degree murder.

*

It turns out that it’s exhausting trying to avoid someone when the world is reduced to a van and a venue, shifting from one to the other on endless stretches of eerie highway. It’s particularly bogus when the person Patrick is trying to avoid is his driving buddy, humming endless rounds of out of tune 80s songs around mouthfuls of Red Bull.

“Come on Patula, you know this one! Hit me with the harmonies!” Pete is upside down on the bench seat, feet dangling back over the head rest and bottomless eyes blinking up at Patrick from the parking brake. “It’s gonna take a lot to take me a- _way_ from _you_ , there’s nothing a hundred men or more could ever _do_ …”

“Come the revolution, you’re gonna be the first one up against the wall, asshole, I swear —”

“I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN _PAT-FRI-CA_!”

“— to God, I —”

“GONNA TAKE SOME TIME TO DO THE THINGS WE NEVER HAD!”

Patrick gives up, if Pete is going to weaponize Toto, he may as well save time and concede defeat right now. He bites his lip and concentrates on the cats eyes glowing like spotlights against the side of the road. They take the next couple miles in silence, Pete’s eyes closed as he drums the tips of his fingers against the taut stretch of his tattooed stomach. The highway is deserted, just them, the stars and Patrick’s overwhelming urge to take Pete’s hand. He thinks Pete might be sleeping, upside down like he’s Keifer Sutherland and this is The Lost Boys.

Does that make _him_ Michael?

“I know you hate me,” Pete mutters. Patrick jumps. “But this has been fun, right?”

“I don’t _hate_ you,” Patrick has no idea why he’s saying such awful, awful lies, “I just… You make me feel stupid. Like a kid. I think,” Patrick pauses, Pete’s eyes catch the light of oncoming headlights, wide and washed gold, “I think sometimes that you don’t like _me_ all that much.”

“What makes you say that?”

Patrick _could_ laugh, instead he ticks off items like accusations, fingers held aloft and shoved into Pete’s stupid face. “Okay, let’s see, hmm? The dumb nicknames, taking the drums from me, laughing at my clothes, cock-blocking me, making fun of me, _licking_ _my face_ _on stage_. Do you want me to go on?”

Pete’s still grinning, teeth catching what little light lingers in the front seat of the van, the Cheshire Cat fading to nothing but a smile. _We’re all mad here_ ; Patrick is falling, falling, falling. “ _That_ is _entirely_ circumstantial, good luck securing a conviction.”

“Whatever,” Patrick rolls his eyes. This isn’t part of their script, it sets him nervous and unsettled, the uneasy sensation of a dream within a dream, everything half a pace off balance. “Another week and we’re back in Chicago,” it aches in his chest to say it, “and you can go right back to not knowing I exist.”

“Oh, Patrick,” it’s the first time Pete has used his _name_ , his throat contracting as he swallows and quirks that soft, thick mouth into a grin, “you have _no_ idea.”

*

“You know, Tricky, you’d have way more fun if you smiled now and again.”

Patrick has forgotten how, he’s certain, to shape the unmalleable material of his lips into a grin. He knows he could do it, once upon a Glenbrook High, he’s got the yearbook pictures to prove it. But now… Now he’s counting off the summer in hours rather than weeks, the last chance to hate Pete and fall for him all wrapped up in one confusing package on an air mattress in the back of an air-cooled van.

(Pete calls it air-cooled. He means the windows have to be rolled down because the air-conditioning doesn’t work. Patrick’s not sure Pete _actually_ knows what ‘air-cooled’ means.)

“And you’d have more friends if you talked less,” Patrick snaps back. The mattress is sagging already, rolling them both towards the center on a tide of questionable physics. “Just go to sleep, asshole.”

“Sing me a lullaby, Paddle Pop,” Pete demands, crowding up into Patrick’s carefully drawn out space. Patrick punches him instead. “Ow, you fucker! What was _that_ for?”

“Annoying me,” says Patrick, shifting away from the polarity of Pete’s presence, stretched out in novelty boxer briefs and mismatched sports socks. Patrick thinks for a second then adds, “See also: generally existing. Go to sleep.”

Pete sighs and tucks his cheek against the curve of his bicep. “Fine. Sleep tight, don’t let the —”

Patrick rolls over, flipping Pete off as he goes.

“Rude much?” Pete says, right before he falls blissfully, uncharacteristically silent. Patrick closes his eyes and prays for pleasant dreams.

Sleeping in the van is disorienting, a hazy half-world of snatched conversation from the front seats versus the humming of the tarmac under tires. Sometimes, Patrick’s unsure if he’s really awake as he watches the way the headlights give way to the rose gold streak of sunrise across the headliner. He questions if he’s still sleeping when Pete — octopus limbs and flopping hair that sticks to Patrick’s numerous sweaty places — tucks his nose into the curve of his throat and runs chapped lips against the grit of his sweat-damp skin.

So, Patrick’s pretty sure he’s dreaming when it’s _his_ mouth ghosting the tacky heat of Pete’s shoulders, the woozy-edge of non-reality twisted with the faraway hum of the radio. His hand is low, lower, skating the edge of Pete’s waistband and kissing his thumb to the coarse curls cresting over onto the firm warmth of Pete’s belly. His hips fit just so to the curve of Pete’s ass, his cock curved precisely between the rounded swell of butter-soft ass cheeks.

Pete presses back, arches up, brings the insistent hardness of his own warm, sleepy erection to graze the back of Patrick’s knuckles. Patrick breathes, thrusts, breathes again, dimly aware that this is going to make him blush when he wakes up. When he’s safely on his own side of the mattress and Pete is grinning at him like he knows a secret.

This will be Conscious Patrick’s problem.

Unconscious Patrick strokes a hand along the coarse length of Sex Dream Pete’s thigh, he ghosts his fingertips under the hem at the leg of Pete’s shorts and gifts himself the hot, damp skin of taut groin that leads to the heavy heat of his balls. Patrick wants to taste them, wants to bury his nose in the brackish hair there and absorb him like the tang of saltwater. But Patrick is sleeping, only dreaming of thrusting sloppy-slow against the curve of Pete’s ass, nerves burning neurons through skincottonskin.

In the dream, Pete spreads his legs.

Theoretically, Patrick wants so much more. Wants the dream to gift him with the taste of Pete’s cock staining every crevice of his mouth. _Theoretically_ (because this isn’t consciousness but fantasy) he wants to suck the breath from Pete’s lungs via his dick because then — _then_ — Pete won’t have oxygen to expend on useless syllables that make him everything Patrick hates. Loves. Hates.

(You see, Patrick’s got this sleep-numb, half-formed theory that Sex Dream Pete is _also_ an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut.)

Patrick smooths his mouth against the shoulder blade in front of him and lets the dream moan on his behalf. Not _him_ , it’s not _his_ chest rumbling sore as he grinds forward and Pete pushes back. Oh no. Patrick will never be able to look Pete, the band, or his mother in the eye after this. This is sticky shorts tossed into rest stop bathrooms and begging Andy for a change of co-pilot kind of semi-conscious fantasy. Patrick is too loose-limbed and floating to stop, warm-sticky, rushed through with far-away dreams.

The long, slow pull of his cock against cotton is exquisite, the obscene red length of his prick pressing urgent, tenting his boxers as he rubs, rolls, slides into the cleft of Pete’s ass, into heat and promise. Patrick’s bonesbloodskin burns, it combusts, the culmination of a nuclear detonation as he curls his hand around the throbbing, leaking, heated length of Pete’s cock, hand questing, up and up, greedily through the leg of his shorts.

One pull, two, three, Patrick’s hand slides slippery over the wet-slick crown of it. Pete tosses his head back, crashes their mouths together, sour with the taste of morning breath and last night’s beer. Patrick kisses back, sloppy wet and messy, and does three things:

First, Patrick thinks that this dream became awfully vivid, terribly grounded in realism with the bitter taste of Pete’s unbrushed tongue thick and heavy in his mouth. This thought explodes to dust and nothing when...

Second, Patrick comes, thick and hot and hard enough to blur his vision, his body folding in and exploding out in the confusing crash of scintillating sensation that sparks static shocks along his skin. He fills his underwear, leaks onto Pete’s he’s sure of it, and strangles a groan into the stuffing of his sleeping bag.

Finally, he realises with horror movie slowness, that this is not — in fact — a dream. His hand is actually wrapped around Pete’s actual penis, fingers curled to the hard length of it as Pete, mumbling something sleepy-soft and desperate, thrusts into the loose coil of Patrick’s fist. Patrick, a reasonable young adult, yelps in shock-terror and yanks his hand free. He buries his knee in the small of Pete’s back and, with a grunt, shoves him as hard and as far across the mattress as he physically can.

(In an interview in 2018, Pete will describe the moment Patrick “yeets” him from one side of the van to the other and, in 2018, Patrick will seriously consider doing the same thing again. In 2001, Patrick has no such verb for the inelegant way Pete arcs through the air before hitting the side of the van with a wounded grunt. He just knows he didn’t throw him far enough.)

“Trick?” Pete mumbles, tossed to his back with wide eyes and a raging hard-on tenting the front of his boxer briefs. “What just — did you? Did we?”

“Shut up!” Patrick snarls, snatching at his jeans and shuffling them on to hide the wet patch. Pete’s grin is shit-eating. “Stop fucking smiling! Just — don’t say _anything_.”

“Never said a word.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick’s hand smells of dick — _Pete’s_ dick — salt-warm and bitter, “You — you took advantage of me! I was sleeping, I was — was _dreaming_ —”

“About me?” Pete is alarmingly unperturbed by this… this… sleep hump.

Patrick will cut out his own tongue before he admits that. “No. Not about you. _Never_ about you. About… about hot girls and stuff.”

“About me.” Pete repeats, cocky now, his erection subsiding to sloppy half-hardness, the sticky-wet patch of precome standing stark and dark against the cotton. Why is Patrick looking? Patrick should _not_ be _looking_.

“Guys!” Patrick is on his knees, tousled head and guilty eyes popping into the rear-view mirror. Andy – driving – screams. “Rest stop? _Now_?”

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Patrick, what the hell?”

“ _Please_?” If Patrick doesn’t toss these shorts into the nearest trash can and then set fire to it, he’s going to scratch his way out of his skin. “Those wet burritos, man. I — we’re about to see them again. Not good. This is like… Mexican Food 2: The Awakening, I —”

“On it.” Andy hits the blinker and swings the car onto the off-ramp for the rapidly approaching truck stop. “Consider going vegan next time.”

Patrick hurls himself from the van before they’ve fully drawn to a halt, slamming the door closed behind him and sprinting on numb, tangled feet for the bathroom. There are shorts in his fist, probably dirty but definitely not as dirty as the ones he’s already wearing. He throws the door closed behind him and rests his head against the soothing coolness of it.

The main door crashes inward and the last voice Patrick wants to hear rings out, bouncing off the tiles and vibrating through the roots of his teeth.

“Patrick? You in here?”

Patrick grits his teeth and clicks his heels together three times. Shitty Converse don’t work the same as ruby red slippers: three muted thumps and he’s still in the bathroom. “No.”

“We need to talk about that,” Pete insists and Patrick can see him through the crack in the door, hopped up onto the counter between the sinks, legs swinging in girls jeans that do something confusing to Patrick’s pulse.

“We never need to talk _ever again_ ,” Patrick assures him, his heart fizzing sticky in his ears. “We don’t need to talk, or look at each other, or _breathe the same air_ —”

“Come on, man,” Pete cuts him off. “We’re like Romeo and Juliet!”

Patrick suspects he read a very different version to Pete.

*

The licking turns into Pete’s Signature Dick Move. He probably trademarks it, obnoxious little prick that he is.

Patrick tells himself that garotting him live on stage with his own mic cable probably isn’t wise and definitely won’t look good on college application forms. Patrick tells himself lots of things in a desperate attempt to make it through the last four days of the tour with his pride and dignity somewhat intact.

(This is laughable. Patrick no longer has pride _or_ dignity. He left them, dropped into the trash can of a rest stop bathroom somewhere in Ohio or maybe Indiana. Has he mentioned that it’s like, _super_ hard keeping track of states?)

He does it, though. _They_ do it and it’s suspiciously like belonging to an _actual_ band when the bar owner at their second-to-last show hands them a wad of fives and tens on their way out of the door without evening arguing about it. They act cool, well, sort of cool. Patrick only nudges Joe in the ribs like, twice as they bounce on the toes of their shoes and hold in the hollering until they’re sat in the van and counting it onto the faded upholstery. It’s the correct amount _plus tip_.

Patrick has never been so thrilled to see three hundred dollars in one place.

“Motel tonight,” Pete declares, wafting the money like he’s going to start tucking it into someone’s garter belt. Patrick immediately forces himself _not_ to think about Pete wearing a garter belt. This new-found perversion is unsettling. “I’m not handing the two of you back to your mothers smelling of pot, beer and jock rot.”

Patrick is excited at the prospect of a shower — his first in two weeks — for precisely the length of time it takes Pete to reappear from the office of a motel with only two of its letters illuminated (they are, apparently, spending the night in a ‘mo’) carrying two keys.

Patrick, King of Stating the Obvious, says, “You have two keys.”

Pete, a Dick of the Highest Order, replies, “I’ll take ‘What is Patrick’s sharpest observation yet?’ for two hundred, Alex.”

“We all shared last time,” Joe points out, Patrick could kiss him for his reasonableness but kissing his bandmates hasn’t worked out well for him so far. “Cheaper.”

“The guy said he doesn’t want us to trash his _mo_ ,” Pete rolls his eyes theatrically. “So, we need to split up.”

“I call Joe!” Patrick yelps, panicked, clinging to Joe ferociously.

“The guy _doesn’t_ want his mo trashed,” Andy says with the kind of steely-eyed fury held by soccer moms and scout leaders. “Might I suggest driving buddy pairs, for all of the same reasons that we didn’t want the van trashed?”

“Might I suggest _no_?” Patrick can’t, _won’t_ , share a motel room with Pete.  Joe gently pries his fingernails from where they’re sinking into the tender flesh of his arm. “I called Joe!”

“Everyone wants Joe in the mo,” Joe finger guns unnecessarily, following Andy obediently with his backpack slung over his shoulder. “Later dudes.”

Pete smirks, because he’s an asshole. “Guess that’s settled. C’mon Peppermint Patty, this way.”

For a moment, Patrick considers sleeping in the van. He tells himself it won’t be so bad when it’s not moving, that he can create a little nest built entirely of his own ritual humiliation at the expense of his own penis and stay there until they hit Glenview. Pete is already walking away, towards the concrete steps that lead up to a room where, Patrick is sure, Pete is going to say all of the things about _that_ incident that he hasn’t said in front of the guys.

Pete whistles, sharp and through his teeth. “Short stack, you coming or what?”

Patrick sighs. Patrick follows.

Pete. surprisingly, doesn’t say a word as he dumps his bag on the bed and heads for the shower. Patrick is left, confused, to sift his way through his duffle bag for the least offensive smelling items of clothing to wear to bed. It’s a pitifully short list.

They switch in silence, Patrick reveling in the heat of the shower pounding blissfully onto his shoulders as he washes his hair — he _washes his hair_ , with _actual shampoo_ — and soaps himself off. Pink, flushed and wearing a Bowie shirt, boxers he’s freshened up with Axe and, for some entirely inexplicable reason, Pete’s beanie, he pads from the bathroom.

Pete looks up, uncertain. “Can we… talk?”

Patrick, not a man to be fooled twice, folds his arms and leans back against the desk. “About _what_? Is this about the puberty thing again, because I swear to _God_ , Pete — ”

“Okay, right, here’s the thing,” Pete takes a deep breath that blows out his cheeks and tugs on the ends of his hair before meeting Patrick’s eyes once more. “We need to have sex.”

There’s a moment where every blood cell in Patrick’s body explodes in a furious attempt to flood his cheeks crimson and swell his cock simultaneously. Patrick thinks he passes out for a second, knees locked in place as he thumps his ass onto the desk. He repeats the words softly, convinced that if _he_ says them out loud, they’ll somehow develop an entirely different meaning to the dictionary definition, that there’s something about slotting them together in that particular order that means something else entirely that’s passed him by.

Finally, he blinks at Pete owlishly from behind his glasses and squeaks. “I… I’m sorry, _what_?”

“Hear me out,” Patrick’s honestly not sure he’s capable of doing anything else at this particular second in time but standing in front of Pete, rabbiting heart and terrified eyes, and listening to him talk, “there’s like, a _lot_ of sexual tension between us and I was just thinking, if this band thing is going to work we should… release that. Look, you can call it whatever you like, call it a hate fuck if it makes you feel better, but… yeah. That’s my idea.”

“I don’t _hate_ you,” Patrick’s mouth slips behind the wheel, his brain is less than impressed with this development but seems powerless to prevent the inevitable car wreck, “I already told you that. I — I think I maybe have, uh… a crush? On you?”

“For real? Well that’s _super_!” Pete is already making motions that suggest he might be about to remove his shorts. “Come on, man! Show me what you’ve got.”

Pete is grinning. It’s that big, toothsome smile that tells Patrick he’s the punchline to the joke Pete hasn’t shared yet. The hidden camera moment when everyone jumps out and yells ‘surprise, dickwad!’ and he’s left standing in his underwear while everyone laughs.

Patrick’s voice is quieter than he imagined it could be, cutting across the way Pete is fluffing the pillows and drawing back the sheets. “Could you like, maybe consider _not_ making fun of me for — for ten minutes? Please?”

“But…”

“No. No ‘ _but_ ’. I — do you have _any idea_ how exhausting this past month has been for me?” Patrick’s gripping on the edge of the desk, knuckles glowing through pale skin, bones on display in discussions of boners he doesn’t want to talk about. “Like, how much _effort_ it takes to be one step ahead of you for four weeks? I — do you think those witty comebacks come from nowhere, asshole? This is _hard,_ this is developmentally stunting, _you are stunting my development_ and — and I…I am _not_ cool with this. This is, it’s — it’s —”

Somehow, during this soliloquy, this love song for the mp3 generation, Patrick has taken two steps across the four-step-wide gap between the desk and the bed. _Somehow,_ Pete has mirrored those steps minus a half, hovering uncertainly in the no man's land between rational thought and sexual urges. There’s no more than eighteen inches of threadbare carpet between them, the damp imprint of Pete’s footprints dark on regulation beige polyester. Patrick makes a helpless gesture with his left hand, says a prayer to the Gods of the Morning After to forgive him for the sins of the Night Before and snatches a handful of Pete’s shirt with his right.

“So,” Pete says, before their lips touch. “Is there any literal basis in the name Stump, or…?”

Before Patrick can connect the solid weight of his kneecap with the unprotected target of Pete’s crotch, Pete does it. He closes the gap and pushes the soft, thick warmth of his mouth to the greedy flush of Patrick’s. Pete kisses him like he’s kissed the girls who came before, wet and desperate and dirty, the kind of kisses designed to spin heads and drop panties. Patrick would be struggling out of his own if he was wearing them.

Pete slides a hand into his hair, knocking the stupid beanie askew, the taste of his tongue burnt bright into the soft crevices of Patrick’s mouth. He kisses like he’s claiming territory, like the antidote is under Patrick’s tongue and he’s running out of time to find it. Patrick would choke on his own tongue from the force of it, if his tongue wasn’t currently lodged against the roof of Pete’s mouth, testing the ridges of his palate with fevered urgency.

Before the last, solitary spark of Patrick’s self-control can abandon its post and flee to his cock, he pulls back. “You’re — this isn’t a joke? You’re not just fucking with me?”

Pete shoves down his boxers and exposes the engorged, swollen length of his lust-thick cock, curving up to greet the tattoo low on his belly. He grabs at the shaft, smears the sticky tip until the ink slicks up like it’s fresh and mutters, “Does this look like a joke?”

Patrick barrels him back to the mattress, the aching throb of his cock grinding stiff behind the sensible underwear obtained by his mom from JCPenney especially for the trip. He slips down, mouthing heat into the pucker of Pete’s dark nipples, licking through coarse hair that smells of shower gel until he meets the bartskull, face-to-face and wanting.

“I’m going to suck your cock,” he tells the tattoo. It grins back at him like it approves; Pete whines in the back of his throat.

Patience, teasing, biting kisses along hip bones that crest from honey-gold skin, all of that is for some other time. Patrick is bursting with youthful enthusiasm, harder than he thinks he’s ever been, as he licks along the hot-hard shaft of Pete, traces the tip of his tongue around the ridged cap of him, and then swallows him down. Salt and skin, bitter hot and desperate, Patrick slides down until Pete hits the swollen sensitivity of his gag reflex and Pete yanks him back with a handful of staticky hair, beanie knocked to the mattress.

“I feel like we should maybe have a discussion,” Pete gasps, then pushes him back down before he can answer. Probably just as well since Patrick isn’t hugely motivated for debate. Patrick tastes his spit and Pete’s skin, grinds his own cock surreptitiously into the mattress and thinks hey — this discussion is going better than expected! Then Pete, like a _dick_ , pulls him off again. “No, seriously. We should talk.”

“ _Ow_ , asshole, go easy on the fucking hair-pulling, would you?” Patrick scowls; Pete is really ruining all of this by expending valuable energy on things not immediately related to their penises. “What do you _want_?”

“First off, holy shit, I think I’m going to — am actually _having_ a heart attack,” Pete is gasping like his lungs and heart are galloping in opposite directions, Patrick can relate but hides it with a kittenish lick to the tip of Pete’s cock. “But like, whatever, I — I feel like, if this is your first time, we should probably —”

“Not my first time,” Patrick nuzzles lower, licks through the tangle of trimmed dark curls that cover Pete’s balls, tongue tracing the ridge of the seam between them, “can I fuck you now?”

“Not your — can you — _who_?” Pete appears to be suffering from a mild processing disorder, his eyes rolling back as Patrick sucks him down once more, the flush swell of his lower lip dragging damp and slow along the thick-gorged vein that maps the underside of Pete’s blood-dark cock. “Okay, fuck — fuck it. Discussion over.”

His mouth snaps shut resolutely, then droops slack unintentionally.

Yeah, thinks Patrick, that’s more like it.

Patrick sucks greedy, gorging himself on each inch of skin that slides sticky over his tongue. He wants the taste of the smell that dampened his fingers in the back of the van, wants more than the thin trickle of precome that stains the back of his throat. He wants so much and they have no time left. In forty-eight hours he’ll be Patrick Stump: Band Geek and Pete will be the Crown Prince of the Chicago Hardcore Scene once again.

He’ll make this count, this freak-accident freeze frame of a moment. It’ll be enough to last him a lifetime of second best.

Patrick’s hand finds the heavy swell of Pete’s balls, fingernails scraping through his pubic hair, touching the sensitive ridge of his perineum. He swallows around the fuck-flushed length of Pete’s thickened cock, drags the pad of his thumb across the tightened twitch of his hole and looks up through the fringe of his lashes.

Pete makes a sound like he just got hit by a freight train; a garbled, agonised shout. Then, Pete comes down Patrick’s throat, sticky-hot and bitter and so much, too much, spilling over the drawn-taut flush of Patrick’s lips to stain his chin.

And Pete, he seems lost for words for once as he stares at Patrick from half-hooded eyes and whispers, “Damn.”

Patrick grins, spit-damp and wiping the mess into the back of his wrist. “Damn right, asshole.”

*

Patrick is thinking and, Patrick has decided this: Pete Wentz is a lot more palatable when he’s not talking.

Pete is definitely improved when the words are stolen from his lungs by the swell of Patrick’s cock between his lips, stretching his mouth white-wide at the corners. He can still taste Pete’s come, lingering salted at the back of his throat, between his gums and teeth, under the sweep of his tongue. He rocks his hips and Pete chokes, gags, slips down further with a huffed and happy sigh. This could be it, the height of all sensation, the pinnacle of his very existence contained in the wetsuckpull of Pete’s gorgeous mouth against the velvet length of his prick.

“Good boy,” he says, without thinking about it much, twisting strands of dark hair between his fingertips.

Pete makes that noise again, like he’s been struck by lightning and punched in the stomach all at once. His eyes roll back, spring wide and eager as he nods, shuffles, demands more of Patrick’s dick down his throat. Patrick gasps, fist tightening like electric shocks as liquid sensation pools low in his belly, legs spread and trembling as he says it again, desperate dark and aching. “Fuck… _good boy_.”

And _of course_ Pete Wentz has a praise kink.

If Patrick has allowed himself to think about fucking Pete over the past four weeks — actually think, dreaming does _not_ count — he didn’t imagine this. He thought of bathroom stalls or the back of the van, of hurried orgasms into the cotton of unwashed underwear but not — not this. He pulls Pete back by a handful of coarse curls.

“Did the dude on the desk _really_ say we had to take two rooms?” Pete grins, pointed teeth at the corners, sparkling eyes above. He opens his mouth. Patrick cuts him off. “Don’t tell me. Don’t — just _don’t_ tell me. Do you have a condom?”

“My wallet,” Pete gestures in the vague direction of his discarded jeans.

“Lube?” Patrick prompts.

“I do not,” Pete confirms, like the asshole that he is. He’s kneeling now, the rude red length of him — hard again — brushing up against the paleness of Patrick’s thigh. “You?”

“I have the youthful ability to worry about my bad decisions in the morning _and_ I can see complimentary hand lotion on the nightstand.” Patrick offers hopefully. “Does that count?”

Patrick’s belly swoops, bottoms out, he _dies_ as Pete leans in and nips at his earlobe. “That _totally_ counts.”

*

“Good?” Patrick slips another finger into the tight heat of Pete’s asshole. Three now, the swollen stretch of him around the pale press of Patrick’s digits almost shocking. He curls them, drags them up against the burning bump of Pete’s prostate, feels him shudder and clench. “Good boy…”

“You’re — you’re _seventeen_ ,” Pete sounds dazed, strung out and halfway to desperate as he fucks down onto Patrick’s fingers, riding his hand. “This isn’t — you shouldn’t… _Seventeen_ , Patrick. You can’t even rent a _car_...”

God, this is something. Some faraway part of Patrick’s primal monkey brain is rattling its cage at the way goosebumps pop out on Pete’s caramel skin under the teasing trail of fingertips against his stomach. Patrick rubs his spit-tacky dick against Pete’s thigh and closes his hand around the solid warmth of Pete’s cock. Like last time, like the van and the dark but better, powerful. Pete arches up, presses into him and cries out, mouth slack and open and flushedrawred from the previous intrusion of Patrick’s cock.

“I’m going to fuck you,” says Patrick, fingers eased free and lotion smoothed to the twitching, wet length of his cock.

“It’s about time,” Pete groans, hips canted up and stretched out hole on display. They slide the condom on together, slick-slippery and perfect over the film of makeshift lube.

Patrick is flesh-tender and swollen, the seeping sensitivity of a bone-deep bruise. Their mouths meet and Patrick thinks he might be dying, lost in the taste of Pete’s mouth, his mouth, the tang of their cocks coating the flush of Pete’s lips. He repeats, softly, “I’m going to fuck you.”

Pete’s lips quirk under Patrick’s, his heart wetmessy and pulsing raw in his chest as he strokes his fingers through Pete’s hair. He’s not in love, he reminds himself, but fuck this feels close.

“Good.”

He pauses, wound-raw cap of his condomed cock pushed flush to the butter-soft pucker of Pete’s hole. He sinks in, half an inch and nothing more, pauses and waits. Pete whines into his ear, operatic and prettier than anything he’s ever howled into a microphone. “ _Please_.”

Patrick slides in, slides deep, slides _home_. Pete expands and contracts around him, giving willingly to the invasion of his body whilst simultaneously tightening around each inch of intrusion. Patrick stills when he bottoms out, panting sonnets into the curve of Pete’s throat and reminding himself that he’s seventeen, it’s totally acceptable to blow straight of the gate.

Pete shivers, eyes wide and endless, the same way they looked upside down in the footwell of the van, painting the awkward silences with Toto and taunting promise. Patrick kisses him, sweetsoftslow, collects his breath and the tattered remnants of his self-control.

He thrusts. Like he did in the back of the van, hips jolting up into the peach-soft curve of Pete’s anatomically perfect ass. Pete arches his back, thrusts the sticky-tipped length of his velvet-veined cock against the shuddering stretch of Patrick’s stomach. It’s fine. It’s okay, Patrick is thinking unsexy thoughts and Patrick is _not_ going to come immediately.

“I think I’m gonna come,” he gasps, senseless and too far gone to be embarrassed.

Pete laughs, throaty-soft and sexy and seizes the length of his cock. “Me too.”

Teeth gritted, he starts to move, dragging against heat and exquisite, beautiful tightness. He finds that spot on the fifth thrust, feathers against the divine thrum of it as Pete gasps, bucks, clenches hottightslick around him. He does it again and again and again until Pete is liquid beneath him, puddled on the mattress as he begs and whines around those big, white teeth snagged over his lip.

Patrick is chasing that moment, that perfect comet trail of blissful completion that hovers close enough he can smellseetaste it. He licks into the depth of Pete’s mouth, tastes the rawness of scream-sharp vocal cords and the delicious bite of cinnamon altoids. This is it, Patrick decides, the peak moment of his existence, the reason his ancestors stepped onto dry land.

He thrusts hard, strangles a cry as Pete tightens around him and paints their stomachs with ribboning stripes of pearlized silk. He lets go, loses himself in the erratic motion of desperate hips and the slick, wet warmth pooling sticky between them.

Patrick comes. He comes half blind and buried in the tight heat of Pete’s convulsing body, feels him suck him in deeper, desperate, greedy for the swollen length of Patrick’s pulsing cock as he fills the condom with throbbing, aching strokes. He sees stars, planets, distant fucking galaxies expanding and contracting behind his eyelids as he tingle-throbs from the inside out and cries some mangled approximation of Pete’s name into the sweaty skin of his throat.

He collapses, fucked past sensibility and thoroughly dazed, to the damp heat of Pete’s body.

*

This is it.

Patrick bounces on tingling toes as he peeps out from behind the curtain at the crowd milling restless in front of the boxy little stage. Joe is mouthing a breakdown at his guitar like it can understand him. Andy is twirling his drumsticks back and forth between his fingers, counting off beats between breaths as he rolls his shoulders.

Pete? Pete is behind him, hand on his shoulder, watching the crowd with the same restless anticipation that sings through Patrick’s veins. He squeezes, soft and reassuring, brings his mouth to the shell of Patrick’s ear.

“Looking forward to getting back to Chicago?”

Patrick stares at his hands then back over his shoulder at Pete. “Depends. Looking forward to forgetting I exist?”

Before Pete can reply, they’re ushered on stage, the usual fumble of mic stands and cable pick-ups, checking and rechecking before Pete steps into the spotlight. Patrick is nervous, unsure, they’ve rehearsed a new song today — something Patrick has written in the back of the van under the shuddering light of his cellphone — but it’s not quite ready. Still, he wants to play it, wants _Pete_ to want to play it because if he does…

If he does, it means Fall Out Boy might be a thing.

It means Pete and Patrick might be a thing.

“We’re Fall Out Boy,” Pete informs a crowd that’s barely halfway interested in watching them. “To my right is the gorgeous, the talented, the _edible_ Mr Patrick Stump, ladies and gentlemen, and this is his love song. It’s called The World’s Not Waiting…”

Patrick sings with every fiber of his being, every molecule and burnt-out nerve ending humming with the music that floods through him. And at the final chorus, when Pete leans into him and mouths the lyrics into his skin, Patrick leans right back and tastes the salt-mist sweat that dews the air between them.

_"We've been down, we've been out, we've been hanging 'round, tip our glasses to no direction, yeah, start the van, get me out of this one horse town, waste this night."_

Patrick can’t wait to get back to Glenview.

Because then, they can take over the world.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that, it was a blast to write!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always hugely appreciated or come follow me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers


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